Review of Population and Social Policy, No. 9, 2000, 1–23

The Welfare State, the Middle Class,and the Welfare Society
Masayuki FUJIMURA*

Abstract
The welfare state system commanded a social consensus for acertain period after the Second World War and is still regarded by some as an
ideal model. Since the 1970s, however, it has been exposed to criticism due tofiscal crises, problems in everyday life, etc. As a consequence, the welfare state issurrendering its exalted position to a welfare society where people are at thecenter of management through local communities and nonprofit organizations(NPOs). In Japan, the welfare state and the welfare society are regarded as being
antithetical in terms of the people who run them. The welfare state is considered
to attach great importance to assisting the poverty-level/low-income group.
However, because social insurance constitutes the core of its policies and the
middle class has gradually come to enjoy substantial benefits through expanded
coverage by welfare services and reductions in the burden of beneficiaries, thissystem is giving rise to the idea of “the welfare state for the middle class.” On theother hand, NPOs, which are considered to be a key component of welfare
society, are simultaneously organizations whose framework is supported by the
middle class. The middle class, therefore, is becoming both the beneficiary of thewelfare state and the backbone of welfare society. The aim of this paper is toreconsider the positions of the welfare state and the welfare society in the light ofthis new perspective of the middle class.

1. Introduction
With the arrival of the twenty-first century, it may be said that the welfare state
stands at a crossroads. There was a time when the twentieth century was called“an era of socialism.” This was true not only in the establishment of socialist
states at the beginning of the century but also in their decline toward its close.
In fact, the welfare state and its vicissitudes may well have been a product of
the twentieth century.
The welfare state, which had been in preparation together with the various
elements needed to support it since the nineteenth century, was formed inearnest after the Second World War; at one time it was the ideal model ofdeveloped capitalist countries that aimed at a mixed economy in their rivalryThis is the English version of “Welfare state, middle class, welfare society” Japanese Sociological
Review 49 (3): 352–371, 1998.
* Musashi University

[1]

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Masayuki FUJIMURA

with socialist countries. Starting in the second half of the 1970s, however, whenvarious countries experienced low economic growth, the welfare state received
widespread criticism (the crisis of the welfare state) and the concept of the ideal
model underwent a change. One revision was provided by the change
hypothesis “from the welfare state to the welfare society.” But irrespective of theactual situation, the idea of “the welfare state and the welfare society” itself—
almost 25 years after the publication of R. A. Robson’s (1976) work under thesame title—has become somewhat outmoded. Taking its place is the concept
propounding the harmonious transition from a welfare state centered on central
and local governments to a welfare society centered on local communities andnonprofit organizations.
Yet we need to remember that the welfare state was created to reverse theadverse effects of the “anti-welfare society,” which was unable to provide its
people with the minimum living standards, security, or stability. The reality thenwas fraught with unemployment and health problems, as well as the increasing
burdens of child care, nursing care, etc., caused by changes in the social
structure and the weakening of families and local communities. The recognition
that the existing political system could not resolve these dilemmas and thatpublic dissatisfaction would lead to the destabilization of government paved theway for the welfare state. It follows that one could not be so optimistic as toimagine that a welfare society would be formed in accordance with “preestablished harmony” even if it is clear that the welfare state had come to adead end. Rather than treating the concept of “the welfare state and the welfare
society” as merely the transition of hegemony from one model to the other,would it not also be necessary to reformulate a kind of analytic relationshipbetween these two ideals?
This study adds another dimension to the welfare state/welfare society debate.
That dimension is the middle class. There are untold issues regarding the middle
class alone, but here I will refer to workers as the new middle strata with a
middle-class consciousness, the greatest common divisor.1 Is it not possible totransform the notion of “the welfare state and the welfare society” into a theoryof civilization that looks back over the twentieth century through theconfirmation of this concept of the middle class and the actual state? This paper

1

Major issues with respect to the concept of the middle class include the following: (a) Is it astratification or a social class? (b) Is it defined by occupation or income? How does one
evaluate the problem of status inconsistency? and (c) Is it substance or consciousness? Althoughthese issues are well understood, I will treat the middle class here (to the extent necessary todevelop my argument) only as consisting of workers who constitute the new middle groupwith a middle-class consciousness as a minimum. Though it is somewhat dated, see Ishikawa etal. (1982) concerning these points.

The Welfare State, the Middle Class, and the Welfare Society

3aims to establish such a perspective.
Because it involves a number of difficulties, empirical examination to clarify thetrilateral relationship of welfare state/welfare society/middle class is by no means
easy; accordingly, the focus here is on fundamental issues. Nevertheless, inconsidering the twenty-first century in a hypothetical manner, I will establish a new
viewpoint, one that asks the question, “For whom is the welfare state intended?”

2. Development of the Welfare State
2.1. From Convergence to Diffusion

In the welfare state system, which has undergone full-scale development since
the mid-twentieth century, the central government has generally constituted thecore; its role has been to achieve a welfare state, and the scope of its domain has
been the state. But in modern society, which has produced internationalizationand globalization, expansion is no longer limited to one state but has come toaffect the achievement of such a task in a variety of ways.
An order to ensure the minimum level of security and stability for a society
through various institutions and policies mainly at the state level, but also at the
local level, is called a welfare state system. This system, together with the various
elements needed to support it, had been in preparation since the nineteenth
century but was established in earnest after the Second World War. Broadly
speaking, the welfare state has five basic components: (1) a social security
system; (2) central and local governments as the managerial core of the system;(3) social recognition and legislation of fundamental human rights, which
support the system’s establishment at the ideological level; (4) the justification ofstate intervention in the economic sphere to achieve full employment; and (5)the realization of mass democracy based on the principle of parliamentarydecision making in the political sphere. A system suitable for governing thewelfare state is formed by combining these elements, though in different degrees.
With economic/political/ideological conditions in place after the Second World
War, transition to the welfare state system became a comparatively simple task indeveloped countries and was demanded by the people.
It was H. Wilensky’s (1975) “theory of convergence in the welfare state” that
established a theoretical hypothesis that was sociologically important to thewelfare state. According to this theory, the policy structures of countries withdifferent social conditions, lifestyles, and cultures would all become welfare
state-oriented through industrial progress and the rise of manufacturing. Wilensky
tried to explain the progress of a country’s social security as an increase in

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Masayuki FUJIMURA

national income, an increase in the proportion of elderly people, and a mature of
the social security system; to some degree, he succeeded. His proposition
furnished a good description of the status of social security in various countries
between the 1950s and the 1970s. It also demonstrated that improved social
policies corresponded to the steady economic growth enjoyed by these countries
in the latter period.
In the 1970s, however, the situation underwent a change and Wilensky’s
convergence theory came under fire. One criticism related to “the crisis of thewelfare state” in the second half of the decade. In 1981 the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned that the welfare state,
which had developed during a high-growth period of the world economy, would
face a crisis under a fiscal burden that would increase in relative terms during a
low-growth period. In reality, the predicted immediate decline in the social
security budget did not occur. Nevertheless, the fact that the welfare state
requires appropriate conditions within a country’s economic structure wasclarified. When the conditions became inappropriate, developed countries started
to transform their welfare state systems in diverse ways—from the mid-1970s
through the 1980s—through their respective political structures and labormanagement relations mechanisms. The neoconservative response in the United
Kingdom and the United States and the neocorporative response in Sweden aregood examples (Mishra 1990). Such changes were referred to as “the end of
convergence” in the sense that the scenario of countries developing similar
welfare states collapsed (Goldthorpe 1984).
2.2. Limits to a Welfare State System in One Country

In the 1990s, management of the welfare state became even more difficult as aresult of increasing borderlessness and intensified competition for capital, humanresources, and information, referred to as “mega-competition,” as well as
financial crises in various parts of the world (Tada 1997). Part of the reason forthis was that developing countries, having strengthened their manufacturing
capacity, were catching up with developed countries, providing the world withproducts at lower prices and in some areas even achieving an economicallycompetitive position. Because both industry and the state in developed countries
incur high costs, such as for production and social security, developed countries
are becoming unable to compete with the lower-priced products, as well as withthe economic structure that produces them. Clearly, a country does not exist by
itself in a laboratory but is only one of many countries of the world’s economy
involved in complex relationships with other nations.
The structure of developed countries cannot adequately cope with a chronic

The Welfare State, the Middle Class, and the Welfare Society

5

financial crisis or with downslides in industry and finance; when an entire
economic structure shows signs of weakening, depending on the industry,
bankruptcy is no longer a rare phenomenon. As a consequence, maintenance offull employment—a pillar of the welfare state—is becoming more difficult toachieve. This not only causes increased unemployment but also places a burden
on social insurance. When the performance and thus the profits of businessenterprises do not improve and the wages of workers do not increase, theincome from social insurance premiums does not grow either. Moreover, because
unemployed people cannot afford their insurance premiums, it is necessary to
pay them unemployment insurance and, depending on the circumstances,provide them with public assistance; this increases government expenditures forsocial security.
At the same time, businesses must keep their costs low to compete with cheap
products arriving from developing countries; this means that the burden of half
the social insurance premiums and corporate welfare, which have so far been
carried by the business sector, have reached their limit. Even if the state attempts
to increase social insurance premiums to maintain the social security system,
business enterprises are no longer able to respond to such measures. Under
these circumstances, practitioners are beginning to argue for a “leangovernment,” from which the superfluous flesh has been culled but which is firm
and whose framework is well defined, rather than the alternative of “biggovernment or small government,” which is politically debated in regard to theappropriateness of state intervention in the economic structure.
Initially, it was thought that the welfare state was capable of solving the
problems of national life. But developments in the world economy have made it
more difficult to manage the welfare state using only one country’s logic. In thissense, it is suggested that “a welfare state system in one country” has collapsed.
As early as the 1950s, Swedish economist G. Myrdal (1960) asserted that theconcept of “a welfare world,” rather than a welfare state, was necessary, voicing
the criticism that a welfare state tended to concern itself only with the domestic
situation. In the 1990s, even issues such as whether a state could maintain its
own welfare system or how it could be maintained came to be affected to asignificant degree by developments across the globe. Thus the idea of a welfare
world has become less an absurd suggestion than an analytic viewpoint.2

2

So far I have taken up arguments related to the economic structure from among welfare state
theories.In recent years, however, citizenship theories related to the legal structure andtypological theories that make an international comparison with regard to the establishment
and development of the welfare state have also been on the increase. For citizenship theories,
see Ito (1996); for typological theories, see Okazawa and Miyamoto (1997).

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3. From a Welfare State Theory to a Welfare Society Theory
3.1. Theories on a Welfare Society in Japan

In looking back over the development of the welfare state, one sees that anincontrovertible reality has existed, although not without the element of a politicalslogan. In this process idealism faded as it became increasingly difficult to defend
the welfare state given the “failure of government” to remedy the “failure of themarket.” In contrast, Robson (1976) has overcome this difficulty by bringing thewelfare state and the welfare society into the same arena and introducing thewelfare society as a kind of ideal model. He explained the relationship between
the two concepts as follows: “The welfare state is what Parliament has decreed
and the government does. The welfare society is what people do, feel and think
about matters which bear on the general welfare” (p. i). “Some of our mostserious difficulties are due to the fact that we are trying to be a welfare state
without a welfare society” (p. 3). “Only a democratic welfare society makes it
possible to establish and maintain a true welfare state. Therefore, we must not
only look at the services and functions of public bodies but also take into accountthe attitudes, opinions and behavior of the people themselves” (p. xxiv).
Here, it is assumed, Robson argued, that a welfare society created by people is aprerequisite for the promotion of a welfare state comprising various institutions; heemphasized the implicit relationship of the “welfare state/welfare society.”
Moreover, a sense of community is a prerequisite to mobilizing people for a welfare
society: “It is this which is at present lacking, and until we can acquire it, a welfare
society will not exist and the welfare state will have built its elaborate structure onsand” (p. 111). In comparing Japan and the United Kingdom, Robson pointed outthat three conditions existing in Japan were favorable to the advancement of awelfare society: (1) the absence of racial problems, (2) successful labor-management
relations, and (3) the absence of a hierarchical system (pp. xvii–xix). His emphasisof these points acknowledged that social problems caused by a class society, labormanagement clashes, and immigration from the former colonies were hindering thepromotion of a welfare society in his own country. “We [Britain] cannot have agenuine welfare state without a welfare society as its counterpart; ...each iscomplementary to the other; and ...so far we have achieved only a limited successin building a welfare state because there are so many elements in our society andour policies which are in conflict with that aim” (pp. 215–16).
Then, how were welfare society theories treated in Japanese society which,according to Robson, has more advantages than British society? From a political
viewpoint, the Japanese advocated transition to a welfare society in two stages.
The first stage, from the end of the 1970s through the first half of the 1980s (HoriThe Welfare State, the Middle Class, and the Welfare Society

71981), was endorsed mainly by the Liberal Democratic Party and the Economic
Planning Agency. It aimed to achieve a welfare society by strengthening self-helpmechanisms—the family, which is a latent welfare asset, mutual assistance at the
local community level, corporate welfare, etc.—after having ascertained thelimitations of the Western welfare state. According to this theory, governmental
policy would be the ultimate complement to welfare society during this period,
which gave prominence to the element of selectivity in order to minimize theintervention of the state and to limit assistance to those in real need. Here,particular emphasis was placed on the unique role of the Japanese family, which,unlike its Western counterpart, is committed to the support of aged parents andthe strengthening of the family base. But even then this theory was criticized asmerely a way for the government to extricate itself from the fiscal crisis bymaking public responsibility ambiguous and placing an excessive burden on theJapanese population. Too, the relative decline in the family’s support function,
on which great expectations had been placed, gradually became obvious.
Nevertheless, since 1975, as local reformist governments have reconsidered themerits of welfare society, various elements of stage-one theory, such as theimportance of the family, community care and home care, which had just begun,and Japanese-style labor-management relations, which reportedly had given riseto the notion of the superiority of Japanese society ( Japan as Number One),came to be advocated under the rubric of a welfare society (cf. Fukutake 1984).
The second-stage advocacy of welfare society took place in the 1990s, when“the theory of participatory welfare society” was put forward by the Economic
Planning Agency and the Ministry of Health and Welfare (Economic Planning
Agency 1993). In this stage, volunteers and nonprofit organizations from diverse
fields were considered to be the backbone of society when it was impossible torely on families and communities alone. At the same time, however, therecipients of services, such as the elderly and the disabled, were themselves
expected to participate in social programs. Supporting the theory indirectly were
the women’s action groups, which played a central role in providing welfare
services with the participation of citizens, that had begun to appear in various
parts of the country since the mid-1980s, and workers’ collectives, as well as theacceleration of NPO activities with the Great Hanshin Earthquake—said to be an
important turning point in the second stage. The enactment of the Law for the
Promotion of Specific Nonprofit Activities in 1998 was one consequence of thiswork. The welfare society theory set forth here is generally in line with welfare
pluralism, which asserts that diverse actors should be involved in the provision of
welfare services. But in reality, the main feature of “participation” referred to in
the “participatory welfare society” advocated by government organizations is theprovision of labor; such involvement does not extend to participation in decision

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Masayuki FUJIMURA

making or in the development of plans. Compared to the first stage of welfare
society advocacy, where importance was attached to the utilization of all
capacities of action groups other than those belonging to the state, the second
stage is a realistic argument focused on the promotion and development of actors
in the limited area of providing service. Moreover, whereas the first stage in someways rejected the welfare state, the welfare state and the welfare society are
expected to complement each other in the second stage.
3.2. Incentives and Mobilization for a Welfare Society

The dual-stage development of the welfare society theory in Japan can be broadly
summarized as encompassing the period from the strengthening of the family baseto the passage of the NPO law. Then, why is attention focused on the activities ofNPOs rather than on state implementation? On a social level, welfare society theory
emerged from questions about why central and local governments existed at thecore of the system, i.e., the second component of the welfare state identified earlier.
This means that government intervention in economic affairs, which had been
blamed on “market failure,” came to be regarded as the result of “government
failure,” i.e., the welfare state had come to a dead end. The government wasineffective for three reasons: (1) direct provision of services by the government,
which has no competitor, tends to be inefficient and costly; (2) it tends to produce
excessive demand by users and lead to an excessive cost burden unless payment of
the equivalent is required; and (3) government regulations tend to limit choices(Hoshino 1988). In contrast, NPOs are concerned with social change caused bysocial movements that are not everyday phenomena and the concurrent
achievement of objectives through the maintenance of everyday activities. NPOs
meet public objectives while providing people with choices and while
simultaneously competing with other organizations. Thus they engage in routine
activities while filling the gaps in service provided by government and businessenterprises. Accordingly, NPOs may be termed a self-help/mutual-help social
movement whose mission is the creation of a new public space (Melicci 1989).3 In
terms of theoretical sociology, they have emerged in response to a challenge that is both
3

Needless to say, since NPOs are not almighty organizations, they will face diverse
organizational problems in the future. Moreover, there will be various types of NPOs, ranging
from those engaged in activities resembling those of large corporations, following the path of“Not for Profit” or “No Distribution of Profit” (not meaning that they do not engage incommercial activities), to those that offer only volunteer activities of a local mutual assistancetype; they will all experience ups and downs. Naturally, a case scenario where “failure ofsolidarity” becomes conspicuous following “market failure” and “government failure” can be
expected, but from a different viewpoint it can be said that the history of sociology itself has
been a history of ascertaining the “failure of solidarity.”

The Welfare State, the Middle Class, and the Welfare Society

9

old and new: to reconstruct a middle group that links the state with its people, replacing
a local and kinship community (Fujimura 1999). Robson attributed Japan’s proximity toa welfare society, compared to the United Kingdom, to good labor-management
relations and the sense of identifying one’s company as the community to which one
belongs. The labor union is one type of middle group that links the state andindividuals, but the changes in living standards and lifestyles that occurred in thetwentieth century require the pursuit of functions that cannot be achieved through labor
unions, as anticipated by Robson. Together with the change in people’s attitudes toward
solidarity, linkages with NPOs have come to be sought as a way out of this problem.
On the other hand, at the individual level, as an incentive for NPOs, people inmodern society, unable to find fulfillment in either work or play, are finding
satisfaction in domains that are neither (Fujimura 1995a). As A. Melicci observes,
NPOs can be the basis for resistance to a controlled society. For people taking
part in such activities, the achievement of pleasure and self-realization has
become more important than the onerous task of carrying out duties or securing
human rights. The welfare services provided by NPOs can give a sense ofsatisfaction to middle-aged women who no longer have to focus on child care.
In fact, in recent years it has been reaffirmed that the middle classes hold the key
to the emergence of such NPO activities. L. M. Salamon (1993), an advocate of an
NPO theory that refers to the development of NPO-type organizations as a global“associational revolution,” thinks that mobilization of the many members of the
middle class, which has been prompted by long-term economic growth in countries
throughout the world, is the key to prosperity (p. 409). As personal income
increases, accompanied by a rise in the social hierarchy, the successive fulfillment ofvarious desires in human life becomes a certainty. But how to define happinessonce happiness has been attained is an extremely difficult question. In
consequence, as A. H. Maslow points out, the need for self-realization comes to berecognized as the final task after various other needs have been met. At this point
the incentive for participation in volunteer and NPO activities oriented toward selfrealization can be assumed to intensify (Oda 1992). Furthermore, a nationwide
survey on participation in civic activities, conducted by the Economic Planning
Agency in 1997, has shown that middle-income respondents represented the largest
group indicating that they “participate in social activities at present” (Table 1).4
4

Analyzing the K pattern, or the relationship between participation in volunteer activities and thesocial hierarchy, Hiroshi Suzuki (1987) stated that the pattern was conspicuous among the groupwith either a high or a low sense of belonging to a class and either a high or a low
income/educational level and was inconspicuous among the middle group. Although the question
raised there is different from that posed in this paper, which addresses social participation by the
middle class, such difference is the difference between the operational definition of the middle
group and the ideological definition of the middle class. The upper class mentioned by Suzuki canbe deemed to be more or less the same as the middle class referred to in this study.

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Table 1 Social activities of the entire family, by gross annual income
(%)

Total

Total

Have
participated Have neverCurrentlyNoin activities participatedparticipating before
but areanswerin activities not currently in activities
doing so100.0 (842)

17.7

15.1

56.9

10.3

Less than 2 million yen

100.0 (34)

5.9

17.6

52.9

23.5

2 million yen or more but lessthan 3 million yen

100.0 (76)

14.5

15.8

52.6

17.1

3 million yen or more but lessthan 4 million yen

100.0 (97)

15.5

18.6

51.5

14.4

4 million yen or more but lessthan 5 million yen

100.0 (74)

12.1

10.8

66.2

10.8

5 million yen or more but lessthan 6 million yen

100.0 (111)

22.5

19.8

49.5

8.1

6 million yen or more but lessthan 8 million yen

100.0 (120)

25.8

12.5

57.5

4.2

8 million yen or more but lessthan 10 million yen

100.0 (116)

20.7

16.4

54.3

8.6

10 million yen or more but lessthan 20 million yen

100.0 (114)

19.2

15.8

57.0

7.9

20 million yen or more

100.0 (12)

25.0

16.7

58.3

—

Don’t know

100.0 (68)

5.9

7.3

77.9

8.8

No answer

100.0 (20)

15.0

10.0

50.0

25.0

Source: “Civic Activities from a Citizens’ Viewpoint,” ed. Social Policy Bureau, Economic Planning
Agency; Printing Bureau, Ministry of Finance, 1998, 72.
Notes: Actual numbers are in parentheses. Social activities include (1) Promotion of education,
culture, sports; (2) Welfare services to the aged, disabled, etc.; (3) Health and medical care;(4) Preservation of the environment; (5) Prevention of crime and disasters, city planning; (6)Global exchange and cooperation; (7) Dealing with peace and human rights problems,enhancement of women’s status; (8) Relief/support of disaster victims and of disaster-stricken
areas; (9) Others.

There is an episode. Some organizations that provide welfare services with theparticipation of middle-class citizens have adopted a so-called time-saving
system. Under this system, the hours consumed by service to the elderly and thedisabled are registered (saved) with the NPO; instead of being paid for theirwork, volunteers who require care in the future can receive services for theequivalent number of hours of past services rendered (Fujimura 1995b). The
proportion of participants who are interested in this benefit is not particularlyhigh. There may be several reasons for this. For one thing, many middle-classvolunteers do not expect to need this support in the future. Even though young

The Welfare State, the Middle Class, and the Welfare Society

11

disabled people want to participate in volunteer activities and save hours toprovide for their old age, the NPOs are not set up to fully utilize their abilities. It
is also believed that there may inevitably be a hierarchical difference between
service providers and service users involving citizen participation.
Moreover, feminists have criticized the gender bias with regard to NPO
participants who provide welfare services. The division of labor by sex, aphenomenon ridiculed as “men work in the heart of the city, women participate insocial activities in the suburbs” or “men work overtime, women work part-time andparticipate in social activities,” exists latently in some NPO activities. Ironically, insome cases wives’ involvement in NPO activities can adversely affect their own
self-realization by against business activities and their continued participation ispossible only through the monetary support of their husbands’ corporations. For
instance, some female volunteers say that they “engage in NPO activities as
professional housewives.” Presumably, the stability of the financial base andlifestyle of the modern middle-class family makes such gendered division of labor
possible. It is due to the existence of the middle class that the formation of awelfare society is supported by activities oriented toward self-realization. Indeed,this can be seen as the formation of a “welfare society by the middle classes.”

4. The Welfare State and the Middle Classes
4.1. Transformation of the Welfare State

Robson (1976) raised, if inconspicuously, the question, for whom is the welfare
state intended? In his view, the middle class was the principal beneficiary of thewelfare state. “With the extension in the scope of social services to include themiddle classes, the redistribution element tended to diminish,” he wrote. “Thepolicy of extending the social services to cover the entire nation came from theLabour Party although it may have led in some spheres to the middle classes
benefiting to a greater extent than the working classes” (pp. 18–21).
There is a deep-seated image that the welfare state is driven by assistance to
low-income groups and the prevention of poverty. In developed countries,
however, the core of the welfare-oriented institutions that have achieved
affluence in society has tended to be social insurance, such as medical insurance
and pension insurance. With social insurance and the existence of multiple
systems, as presently in Japan, horizontal redistribution within a particular classtends to predominate instead of vertical redistribution between the rich and thepoor. If the amount of the benefit is primarily determined according to theamount of the premiums contributed under the annuity insurance system, etc., it

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Masayuki FUJIMURA

is possible that—depending on the method for calculating the government
contribution—substantial funding is used for the middle class, which has beenable to pay higher premiums.
In Japan, this policy applies not only to social insurance but also to social
services. To cite one example, the standard fee for day nurseries is based on theability to pay. Because the payment amount varies accordingly, fair treatment
referred to as “9-6-4” (ku ro yon) or “10-5-3-1” (to go san pin) cannot be
expected because the method for determining income before tax, which is aprerequisite to ascertaining the ability to pay, is unclear. Even where a substantial
income is derived through self-employment, etc., the level of collection of day
nursery fees can be set quite low depending on the manner of tax declaration.
Moreover, in some cases a payment reduction system is established under whicha local government bears a part of the costly day nursery fees set by the central
government, and the degree of reduction is necessarily higher for the middle
class. This is because the poverty-level/low-income group cannot enjoy thebenefits of reduction due to its essentially low day nursery fees (Figure 1) (Hori1987). Thus, the social welfare system that is based on the ability-to-pay principle
and is meant to play a role in income redistribution has been transformed
through paternalistic intervention by local governments. Such universal
expansionary tendencies in the day nursery policy may have been strengthenedin part by the idea of “children as equals (equal treatment for children at least).”Also, sometimes the administration provides subsidies or offices for NPO

Day nursery fees (Yen)
Unit price for
day nurseries

Amount of collection undercentral government standards

Amount of local
government reductions
Amount of collection underlocal government standards

0Households receiving
public assistance

Income group

Figure 1 Model of the relationship between standard day
nursery fees and income groups

The Welfare State, the Middle Class, and the Welfare Society

13

activities. Since the people who use the services of the organization concerned
are often from the middle class, which is capable of paying for such services
itself, it may be said that this system subsidizes the middle class (Takechi 1993).
In criticisms of such practices, mention is sometimes made of “the welfare state
for the middle class” or “middle-class colonization of the welfare state.”
This shift to preferential treatment of the middle class over the povertylevel/low-income group has developed through the expansion of coverage under
the social service system to all people in the name of universalization of thewelfare state. It also demonstrates that the nature of social issues has changed:
problems centering around poverty have given way to problems that affect allgroups in society—the adverse effects of old age, family difficulties, and concernsof the disabled—the resolution of which is available to all citizens via social
security and social services. N. Gilbert (1983), an American social policy expert,
stated: “The welfare state has lost sight of its original self-limitations and has
become a more ambitious, conceited and incredibly costly affair. It has become apaternalistic state promising to tackle and solve all problems, that is, promising to
make human life problem free” (p. 190). In other words, the welfare state haschanged course, shouldering a burden that essentially cannot be borne, under
the principle of universalism. Gilbert cited the participation of women in thelabor market, the instability of family relations, as reflected in the high divorce
rate, and a growing and increasingly isolated elderly population as some of thereasons for the expansion of social service coverage in the United States toinclude the middle class. Having been picked up by the system, the middle class
has come to secure a position of an existence that must be protected against adecline in life chances, just as the poor, “not as a result of a decline in theireconomic status but by becoming part of the ‘people-at-risk’ group” (p. 75).
4.2. A Structure Friendly to the Middle Class

The tendency of the welfare state to be more middle-class-oriented, expansion of
the client base, higher standards, and the dawning of an era of low economic
growth and global mega-competition—all of these factors have stretched thelimits of management based only on state policy and has inevitably created theneed for providers from the general economic market to enter the welfare
system. This need has become more urgent given that social security reforms
introduced as countermeasures to the fiscal crisis since the 1980s have hadcomparatively severe effects on the poverty/low-income group and relatively
mild effects on the middle class. Figure 2 shows the process of such changeusing an ideal model. In the diamond-shaped hierarchical structure, the welfare
state that started as a system oriented to the poverty-level/low-income group has

14

Masayuki FUJIMURA

Stratification
Upper
MiddleLower
Oriented toward
poverty/low-income
group

Oriented toward
all groups

Relatively substantial weight
given to the middle- andhigher-income groups

Figure 2 Ideal model of the major groups covered in the welfare state

gradually expanded its coverage to all income groups including the middle class.
It may be assumed, however, that, as the stalemate within the welfare state has
become obvious, the middle class has come to be more amply covered than thepoverty-level/low-income group, due in part to elections and different degrees ofpolitical influence (Yamaguchi 1989).5 This situation is reminiscent of something
R. M. Titmuss (1963) once said: The welfare state “does not give assistance tothose who are in the greatest need but gives most to those who hardly need thewelfare state.”
Gilbert (1983), on the other hand, addresses the situational advantages of the
middle class. Compared with low-income groups, the middle class has greater
access to information on the variety of welfare services available. Moreover,because bureaucrats and social workers on the provider side are often from the
middle class, the shared culture and style of communication can indirectly favor
middle-class people. In addition, based on the findings of a survey of the elderlyin the Tokyo metropolitan wards (1996), it has been confirmed that althoughbasic services (medical care, welfare) appear to be equally available, in fact,
there is a gap in their availability due to hierarchical factors (Table 2). With
respect to the relationship between one’s perception of “living conditions” andinformation sources and advisers on medical care/welfare, those who consideredthemselves to be well off had experts on medical care or welfare within theirpersonal network of acquaintances and relatives, those who considered theirliving conditions to be ordinary sought the services of public agencies, and those
who considered themselves to be badly off relied on public caretakers such as
district welfare commissioners. “None in particular” also accounted for a highpercentage of the badly off. A similar tendency was observable in the “asset
score” (Hiraoka 1998, 9). Under the present structure, then, the middle class has
5

It may be that the difficulty of management of the welfare state in the second half of the 1990s
is entering its fourth stage when treatment of the middle or upper class has to be less generous.

The Welfare State, the Middle Class, and the Welfare Society

15

Table 2 Information sources and advisers on medical care/welfare (MA),living conditions, and asset score
Private volunteer organization

OthersNone in particular

—
2.4
3.1

—
0.3
—

20.6 1.44
5.4 1.98
4.7 1.98

Asset score
0–2 (109)
3–5 (150)
6–9 (143)
8–10 (128)

0.9 5.5 2.8 35.8
6.0 14.7 10.7 36.7
4.9 7.7 12.6 32.2
7.0 10.2 8.6 30.5

0.9
2.7
0.7
4.7

0.9
2.7
0.7
4.7

—
—
—
—

14.7
0.7
6.3
3.1

54.1
65.3
66.4
71.9

17.4 3.7 21.1
11.3 8.0 36.7
11.2 14.7 34.3
16.4 25.0 44.5

Average number of replies
chosenPrivate operator
2.9
4.2
5.5

Family doctor

2.9 10.3 5.9 33.8
5.4 9.0 9.3 37.6
4.7 11.8 10.2 23.6

Caretaker/welfarecommissioner
Doctor amongacquaintances/relatives

Living conditions
Badly off (68)42.6 20.6 4.4 20.6
Ordinary (335)69.3 13.1 12.5 34.6
Well off (127)65.4 11.8 18.9 42.5

Information
sources andadvisers

Family/relative

Nurse, etc., amongacquaintances
Person with experienceamong acquaintances/friends
Knowledgeable person amongacquaintances/friends
Counter in hospital/ward
office

(%)

1.44
1.97
1.86
2.27

Source: Hiraoka (1998, 9).
Note: Actual numbers are in parentheses.

greater access to expert services.
In other words, the situation of an “affluent society,” based on the desire
affirmation principle, differs substantially from the image of a welfare state where
the main assistance is provided by the high-minded to the needy (Hoshino 1989).
In one sense, it is natural that welfare policies should be directed to the middle
class, because the middle class itself expands as a group in an “affluent society.”
Accordingly, as long as the welfare state designates “the people” as the object of
its policy, it will necessarily become entangled in the augmentation of policy,
expansion of the scope of coverage, and a rise in the level of service delivery.
Needless to say, one can argue that, based on the merit principle, as in theprivate insurance business, since the middle class bears a great burden, it should
receive generous benefits. Thus, given a welfare policy based on the ability-topay principle and the objective of redistribution, a way of thinking rooted in thebenefit principle tends to be adopted. If the population of the poverty-level/lowincome group is larger than that of the middle class group, more money may be
spent on the low-income group as a whole, even though a reverse case scenario
may occur at the individual level. In fact, however, in developed countries thatenjoy a high standard of living, the middle class has a larger population than the16

Masayuki FUJIMURA

poverty-level/low-income group and thus is the primary beneficiary of the state’s
welfare policy. The result is that, despite its image, the welfare state is compelled
structurally to adopt policies “for the middle class rather than for the povertylevel/low-income group.”

5. The Middle Class under the Name of “the Nationals”
5.1. Equalization as an Inverse Vector

The reason why B. Anderson (1983) once referred to the state as an “imaginary
community” is that “the state as an image” provided the identity that people
sought in modern society, where kinship and local communities disintegrated.
The concept that has supported the image of the state, and that the state has
supported in return, is that of “the nationals.” The fact that the concept of thenationals developed in step with the development of the welfare state throughout
the twentieth century represents, as things have turned out, expansion of thescope of coverage under a system of a guaranteed livelihood based on thisconcept. In this process, individual institutions extended their coverage tonationals generally through various routes such as “from soldiers to nationals,”“from workers to nationals,” and “from the poverty group to nationals,”
depending on the differences in the guarantee system and the individual states. If
the categories are selected in a different way, the change would also represent theprocess of expansion to unconsciously include “the middle class” based onchanges in the hierarchical structure in developed countries. So it may also be
said that the welfare state stands at a crossroads at the beginning of the twentyfirst century in part because of this expansionary policy.
Yet the idea of setting objectives based on the concept of “the nationals,” putforth at the end of the twentieth century, has led to the external neglect of people
other than a country’s nationals (Hoshino 1994) and internal neglect of theexistence of classes. Regarding the former issue, J. Kristeva (1988) characterized
the national state as “a world where only those organized as nationals can enjoy
rights” and raised the possibility that non-nationals and stateless people excluded
from this world may be placed in a position where they have no rights at all. “Arepeople that are not nationals human beings? Do they have a right to enjoy humanrights?” (pp. 187–88). With regard to the enjoyment of human rights, the word“equality,” which originally referred to enlargement of the life opportunities of thepoverty-level/low-income group as a whole, has come—since the system wasestablished—to include the middle class. Equalization has also acted as an inverse
vector. Thus, the change in the policy under which the weight of groups targetedThe Welfare State, the Middle Class, and the Welfare Society

17

has been shifted to include all nationals internally, while limiting the target tonationals externally, has led to a situation described by T. H. Marshall (1963) as
follows: “Citizenship which once promoted social equality has come to provide abase of equality on which inequality can be built” and “has itself become thebuilder of justified social inequality.” This phenomenon has been based on theidea of “universality of the question” along the lines that “everybody gets old,anybody can become disabled.”
In modern society, such thinking is supported by the perception that all
nationals, including members of the middle class, cannot avoid life’s problems or
accidents; underlying this perception is the fact that it has become difficult forthe problems of poverty and low income to be quantitatively prominent in an
affluent society. In Japan, too, the concept of “the nationals” as it exists in law,etc., and relates to social welfare has had the effect of originally targeting thepoverty-level/low-income group for various services and then extending thisassistance to the middle class, based on the notion of equality. Marshallemphasizes the unintended result produced in this way by the two faces of
equalization in developed countries.6
5.2. The Welfare State as a Cultural Apparatus

What has supported such an unintended result? There are several answers to thisquestion, and the truth is probably found in a mixture of all of them. But for thesake of argument, can’t we tentatively assume that this unintended result
occurred because a kind of cultural apparatus has been in operation? The
concept of a “cultural apparatus” was introduced by C. W. Mills (1963; Okumura
1997), who asserted that most of our experiences are indirect, rather than direct,
experiences transmitted through something, and that the framework by which weinterpret these experiences is not our own but one that has been transmitted to
us by someone else. It is the transmitter of the indirect experience or the authorof the framework for interpretation that Mills called a “cultural apparatus”: i.e.,“the cultural apparatus is the lens of mankind through which men see” (p. 323).
This concept has gradually come to be used to explain irresistible tendencies,
though not a physical apparatus, that give meaning to people’s actions,experiences, or perceptions and induce, channel, or reproduce them in a certainway (Ishita 1998).
A grandiose example of such cultural apparatus was developed by M. Weber.
In Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he mentions an episode in whichthose who wished to be certain that they were on the side of those chosen under6

In this regard, see Ito (1996), chapter 5.

18

Masayuki FUJIMURA

predestination dedicated themselves to their occupation (vocation) in a spirit ofdiligence and thrift to prove themselves and thus contributed to the rise ofmodern capitalism. This incident is an illustration of the effective functioning of acultural apparatus that defined people’s actions and perception. If we apply it to
the cultural apparatus within a welfare state, isn’t it possible to hypothesize thatthe welfare state is, in fact, a function of this scenario? Of course, the focus ofanalysis of the welfare state is its fiscal problems and its function as an economic
system from the viewpoint of personal security, but if the development of thewelfare state provides a certain model for people’s actions and perceptions, itwill be sociologically meaningful to examine it from a cultural perspective.
The creation of the welfare state firmly instilled the idea that a new institution
in society would prevent people from facing an impossible existence or an
overwhelmingly difficult life. Those who benefited the most from this system werein the poverty-level/low-income group. Therefore, initially most middle-classpeople did not intend to rely on the “welfare state as a safety net” or anticipate
that their life would descend to this level. Rather, as B. Ehrenreich (1989) pointed
out, they tried to avoid becoming users of the system by seeking a more
specialized, higher-level job to raise their standard of living and to increase therange of their lifestyle choices, while investing in the education of their children to
maintain their social position. In some respects the welfare state, having been
established as a safety net for poverty-level/low-income citizens to be avoided by
the middle class, pushed the middle class—which was developing a competitive
society based on the performance principle—into a socially overheated situation.
But the cultural apparatus represented by the welfare state has not been
allowed to remain a mere safety net. Change is demanded by a society whose
main challenges stem from aging and family-related problems. Owing to this shift
in social issues, members of the middle class are also confronted with difficulties
in life and need to avail themselves of the benefits of welfare policies. A change
in the perception of middle-class people who are required to use the safety netthat they once tried to avoid has been facilitated by the adoption of “thenationals” concept, which should be the justification for the inverse vector, andby the recognition that present problems relate to children, who should beequals, and aging, a process that everyone must face as it concerns the existenceof humankind. What made this possible was the social impression that poverty
had disappeared, while many people’s standard of living rose and the poverty
issue declined in importance.7 If poverty had disappeared, the welfare state must
7

“Rediscovery of Poverty” in the United States demonstrates the fact that poverty had
disappeared so completely from people’s awareness that it had to be rediscovered. Ehrenreich(1989) points out the importance of the exclusion of different cultures from “the suburbs,”
which were formed by the middle class as poverty ostensibly disappeared (p. 53).

The Welfare State, the Middle Class, and the Welfare Society

19tackle the next set of significant problems related to livelihood—i.e., aging andfamily-related issues. At this juncture it became understood that dilemmas
confronting the middle class were also important social concerns. This solved the
problem of cognitive dissonance—that the middle class was becoming an objectof the policies of the welfare state. For the middle class to use the system, thestigma had to be eliminated; what made this possible was a change in the social
issues.8 Yet as the middle class has become the focus of a guaranteed means of
livelihood, the purpose of redistribution between income groups in the welfare
state has been weakened.
In the process of creating an “affluent society,” capitalism, which was formed
with Protestantism as the parent in terms of a cultural apparatus, gave birth to the
middle class as an integral member on the one hand and the welfare state as amechanism to maintain the system on the other. If it is assumed that a series ofcultural apparatuses has been formed and has functioned in a connective manner,
the middle class and the welfare state may be regarded as twins born of thedevelopment of capitalism in the twentieth century. Then, the qualitative changes insocial issues have joined the twins together. Speaking generally about the actual
relationship that emerged in this way, perhaps the “welfare state as a safety net” wasonly a midway phenomenon on the way to a “welfare state of the middle class.”

6. Conclusion
The purpose of social security, social welfare, and ultimately the formation of thewelfare state has been to ensure the social rights of those who are unable toprotect civil rights and liberties themselves. Concrete steps toward this goal haveincluded efforts to realize social solidarity and social justice, as well as thefunction of income redistribution. A present challenge of the welfare state is toclose the gap in social services provision between the poverty-level/low-income
group, which was the original object of the welfare concept, and the middle
class, which has in fact become an indistinct but important beneficiary.
Introduction of the welfare society can be described as an attempt by the middle
class to achieve its desire for self-realization. After all, it may be that “the welfare
state is in danger of tying itself in knots in an attempt to do things which are selfcontradictory” (Robson 1976, 203–4). Naturally, to continue to assume that “thewelfare state is intended for the poverty/low-income group” without
acknowledging the facts would be self-deception on the part of the middle class

8

Another important factor was that it was possible to imagine that a person “had purchased thewhole service” even though, in reality, he or she bore only a part of the cost.

20

Masayuki FUJIMURA

in light of the present reality. It cannot be said that scholars, who are mostly
from the middle class, are entirely free from this conceptual trap. As A. Gouldner(1973) once lambasted sociologists who were making a latent contribution to thetotal control system of the welfare state while at the same time criticizing streetlevel bureaucrats who were in a weak position, we, as scholars, must haveaccurate self-perception and self-discipline.
On the other hand, what is necessary at the present stage, after recognizing the
gap between the perceived and the real, is to grasp the irreversible direction ofJapan’s social security policies that have been expanded to include the middle class.
In Japanese society, where the number of children per family is decreasing and theelderly portion of the population is rising, the areas of child/family welfare(especially child-rearing) and welfare for the aged (especially nursing care), in which
the middle class are also able to get benefits, are assuming greater importance.
Clearly, we can no longer return to policies that are limited to the povertylevel/low-income group alone. Rather, it is essential to recognize that the middle
class is part of the policy objective and to ensure that the policy structure will not
disadvantage the poverty-level/low-income group as well as borderline groups. It
will be necessary to utilize the Nursing Care Insurance Law of 1997 and to
enforce the revised Child Welfare Law of 1998 in order to cope with theirreversible expansion of the scope of welfare coverage; it remains to be seen
whether these legal measures will be effective. In other welfare policy areas,
however, the central object is still the poverty-level/low-income group; in manysuch areas institutional management corresponding to the particular situation isneeded, and the logic used in formulating policies for child-rearing or for nursing
care cannot be applied as it is. At present, policymakers face the difficult
challenge of ensuring that multiple groups, with varying incomes, are fairly
served in the name of “welfare.”
The argument presented in this paper only establishes a perspective on thewelfare state and welfare society and may need to be revised depending on thefurther definition of concepts, operational preparations, empirical examination,
the differences in individual policies, etc. On the other hand, some areas
probably can benefit from the viewpoints expressed here—among them,abandonment of some of the hypotheses. As the problem of ethnicity has sharply
exposed the fictitiousness of the nation-state, is not the bottleneck into which thetheories of the welfare state and the welfare society have fallen, acutely
demanding awareness of the hierarchy embedded in the concept of “thenationals,” that has been used as the basis for the expansionary process, as well
as of its result?
Moreover, recognition that a shift to welfare “by the middle class, for the
middle class, of the middle class” is taking place is crucial if we are to come toThe Welfare State, the Middle Class, and the Welfare Society

21

terms with the welfare state/welfare society at the beginning of the twenty-first
century.9 There is nothing new about this view of social policy theory in theWest.10 Rather, the social consciousness of the Japanese, who do not like to beconspicuous as a class, preferring a different but understated lifestyle, hasprevented the attainment or introduction of such perception under the name of“nationals” or “universalism.” As this paper has indicated, it is possible totransform the welfare state and welfare society into a new relationship ofproblems, not as objects in a fight for hegemony in ideal models, by using theconcept of the middle class as a medium. Recalling that at the beginning of thetwentieth century E. Bernstein assumed a rise of the middle classes in modern
terms, it may be said that theories of the welfare state and welfare society havebeen shown to pose another question in the development of this type ofcivilization theory: Was the twentieth century the age of the middle class?

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